


Belonging

by QueerGirlTakeover



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Hollstein - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3174682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerGirlTakeover/pseuds/QueerGirlTakeover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Laura has gone to Heaven. Now Carmilla has come to Hell.</p><p>Based on a tumblr prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belonging

Laura doesn't remember how she first heard of her arrival. She doesn't remember where she was. It crept up on her like a shadow, and before she realized it was happening she was surrounded. It was almost as though she had always known, though she could remember her arrival and she knew she hadn't known then. It started as a whisper of a thought, grew into knowledge as sure as Laura knew her name.

Laura tries to petition for her, to have her brought into Heaven from the circles of Hell. She is refused. Carmilla is another soul who tried to cheat death, who had preyed on others to keep life, and she was not wanted beyond the pearly gates. When she asks who Carmilla's guardian angel is, they tell her that creatures like her do not belong under their protection. The angels throw her out after her third appeal. They tell her not to come back.

She starts small. She trips people in the street. Shoplifts nail polish and cookies. They tell her to stop and she tells them to punish her. When they don't, she steals cars and burgles houses, starts fights and graffitis the front of people's homes. This time their reprimands are harsher. It is not enough. She cannot bear to think of Carmilla burning alone.

Laura runs naked through the streets, calling for people to watch her, to join her. _Indecency is not tolerated here_ the judges tell her when she is brought before them. Angels with folded wings escort her back to her home, tell her to stay inside for a week. She spends that time planning what to do next, how to get out of her white-gold cage. No place is Hell when they are together and everywhere is when they are apart.

She pushes people off bridges and overpasses, drives her own car into intersections against red lights. She leaves three hundred car pile-ups behind her. Nobody can die here. No guilt, no creeping suspicion of wrongdoing haunts her footsteps. The angels think that if they ignore her she will stop.

When she breaks into the homes of the angels, she watches them dance rubies and laugh emeralds, drink light and sing new souls into being. These are intended to be sent to earth. Most will not return. She looks through their archives, filled with books in a language she cannot read. They are blocks of history when she picks them up; she is holding time made solid. These she leaves in the public library and when they are found by furious angels she is brought before the judge. Ze looms over her, wings outstretched and silver and tells her of the severity of her crime. Her returning snark is not appreciated and this time they confine her for a month. She throws her furniture out the windows, smashes plates on smooth marble floors, walks across the shards and leaves red footprints in her wake. It is a crime to harm a soul belonging to God.

They release her with a warning. _Cease and desist_ reads the order, in her own alphabet this time. She rips it to pieces in front of them and leaves the fragments on her doorstep. She is becoming known as a disturber, as a nuisance, and people begin to follow her. She has unwittingly started a movement and stands at the head of a mob she never wanted to lead. They do as she does, and she watches parts of the white city become blackened with ash and soot. Red and blue flames reflect off every surface. Hell has come to Heaven.

This time they arrest her with diamond handcuffs and she stands unashamed, defiant, before God, beneath his skyward throne and eyes of eternity. He demands of her why she would create unrest where there was rest, why she would disturb the content and breed dissatisfaction in a world founded on happiness. He asks her why she would bring war into peace, Hell into Heaven. She tells Him that Hell is relative.

The day they give her over to the hands of demons she shakes with anticipation, with excitement, with the adrenaline of long-held expectations fulfilled. They mistake it for fear and tell her that she has brought this upon herself. She does not reply. They are only glittering locks, empty wings, useless belief. They leave her with demons, eyes of typhoons and airplane crashes, of children starving in barren fields and others starving in full kitchens, of ropes pulled tight, of fists and screams, and the echo of every gunshot.

Their fingers are pits against her skin when they lead her to their gate. It is of twisted black metal, screaming faces melting into one another. Laura can feel the heat of it like a stifling blanket. Beyond it is a tunnel of flame, reaching into dark heights and casting no light there. It is a fire that consumes and does not give. She steps through the open gates and the bolt slide home behind her. It can only be opened from the outside.

At first her steps are slow and measured. The floor is slick obsidian, where stone and flame come together. It is urgency beneath her feet. She begins to run, looking for the end of the tunnel, for what lies beyond it. She can feel the flames cooling the further she goes and against the fire is a silhouette, one she has longed for. It feels too good to be true and then she sees Carmilla's smile, Carmilla's hair, Carmilla's arms reaching out for her, lips forming the words _welcome home cupcake_ but Laura cannot hear them over her heartbeat _at last at last at last at last._

Carmilla is a sigh of relief, she smells like happiness, like love, like comfort and Laura had been comfortless for so long. When they kiss it is home and joy, it is a thousand years in an instant, it is the world realigning itself around them. Laura stands still for an eternal moment, Carmilla's arms holding her, her own fingers twisted in Carmilla's black hair, only a little longer than she remembered. Her smile is unchanged.

They entwine their hands, fitting like the final fragment of a broken vase or the last note of a symphony, like the opening word of a poem or the first brushstroke of a masterpiece. One kiss more and they turn to the demons, to the dark throne and the smell of smoke, and together they walk into Heaven.

 


End file.
